Brian Dorsey is the author of the well-reviewed Gateway Military Science Fiction series as well as other novels, novellas, and nonfiction works.

LIONESS

Eager to escape a painful past, Michelle Harper joined the Off-Earth Special Operations Service (OE SOS) in hopes of becoming someone other than herself.

Taking the name Cathis, after the Consolidated Armaments Technologies Human Interface Soldier program for which she volunteered, she underwent genetic and physical alterations to become one of Earth’s most powerful and terrifying warriors. However, an unexpected visit to Earth results in conflict with her estranged sister, Kayla, when she challenges Cathis’ path and who it has driven her to become.

But everything changes when Cathis learns of a dark secret that puts not only her life in danger, but Kayla’s as well.

GATEWAY BOOKS

Gateway (Gateway Series Book 1)

Major Tyler Stone stands at the precipice of greatness. After years of faithful service to the Republic, everything seems to be coming together—a promotion, an engagement to a beautiful (and powerful) woman, and the restoration of his traditional family name promise to restore his family to its long lost place among Alpha Humana’s elite.

But his world suddenly begins to crumble when deceit and defeat bring him face to face with the enemy—an enemy that turns his perception of the galaxy on its ear, challenging his understanding of his civilization and his own identity.

Now Stone must choose between duty and honor as he struggles to understand the nature of the war the Humani have been waging for so many generations.

Saint (Gateway Series Book 2)

As the galaxy spirals into open warfare, Tyler Stone has joined forces with his former enemies, the Terillians.

Stone now knows the new war has been manufactured by the First Families to satisfy the Xen Empire’s demand for more slaves—a move necessitated by the spread of a deadly virus that is killing off huge portions of their human chattel. Complicating matters is the Saint, a con-man turned messiah who begins to unite the planets under his brand of religion—one that creates fanatical followers.

Stone must confront not only the enemy but challenges to his own identity while he and his companions battle to save millions from enslavement and death.

Uprising (Gateway Series Book 3)

Tyler Stone has become the most hunted man in the known galaxy. Branded a traitor and reviled by the very people he hopes to save, he must find a way to be true to himself and his people while the combined might of the Xen Empire is focused on making a bloody example of him to any that would oppose their rule.

But he is not alone. Besides his lover–the fierce warrior Major Mori Skye–his former subordinate, Emily Martin, has realized the lie under which she had fought and killed and has joined forces with her former commander. Although she publicly leads the campaign to arrest him, Martin’s true mission is a clandestine plot to spark an uprising. But Astra Varus, the leader of the Humani, is as clever as she is ruthless. If Martin isn’t careful, her actions could not only betray Stone, but lead to her own death as well.

Despite the chaos surrounding him as galactic warfare consumes more and more planets, the greatest resistance Stone faces is from within as he prepares to lead the attack on his own homeworld: Alpha Humana itself.

Schism (Gateway Series Book 4)

The chaotic struggle for control of the known galaxy continues.
After the failed attempt to bring about revolution on Alpha Humana itself, the Akota turn their sights on the duplicitous Port Royal Association in order to remove the scheming power brokers from the board all together. As usual, Marshal Tyler Stone and his team find themselves in the center of the action.

But Stone and his team are in for a deadly surprise when a single warrior threatens to tear both alliances and friendships apart in her relentless quest to exact revenge in the name of the Humani leader, Astra Varus.

Even if they survive, everything will be different…

Cold Planet (A Gateway Universe Story)

The never-ending clandestine war between the Xen Empire and the Terillian Confederation continues and the Dark Zone is littered with the bodies of Guardsmen, Rangers, and those caught in between. It is into this wasteland that a unit of the Humani Elite Guard set out on a recon mission to investigate a planet they suspect contains an illegal Terillian base. The mission quickly falls apart and Lieutenant Emily Martin is thrust into command when her base ship, Draxius, is destroyed and her commander is severely injured. Stranded on an inhospitable planet with enemies all around them, Martin and her men find themselves outmatched and outgunned in a desperate gamble for survival. Lieutenant Emily Martin didn’t become the only female officer ever in the Elite Guard because she thought it would be easy, but this mission could easily prove to be her last.

Rise of the Wolf: Katalya’s Story (A Gateway Universe Novella)

Not every story in the Gateway Universe is a soldier’s story. Young Katalya Skye’s world was torn apart when she was ripped from her family and sold into slavery in the Dark Zone. But she was a survivor and did what needed to be done to stay alive in a violent, unpredictable existence. Everything changes, however, when she unwillingly becomes part of a secret program directed by the Alpha Humana elite.

GOTHIC FICTION

Southern Rites

In 1865, the McCleary Plantation is raided by Union soldiers, leaving behind few survivors. When New York historian Mark Patterson receives an invitation to the present-day plantation for unprecedented access to the records of the Rebecca McCleary family, he learns that their past is far more complicated than he imagined. As Mark digs in to his research, the youngest namesake of Rebecca McCleary looks for ways to get closer to him, a fact that does not escape Mark’s fiancée. Through his interactions with the McCleary women, their staff members, and friendly locals, Mark discovers a family history of violence, manipulation, and even an element of the supernatural.

Told in a series of flashbacks, diary entries, and present-day narrative, Southern Rites turns historical fiction on its head. Part fiction, part history, part romance, and part supernatural thriller, this novel has something for everyone.

OTHER WORKS

Southern West Virginia and the Struggle for Modernity

This work addresses how southern West Virginia’s complex and often chaotic history still impacts key aspects of modern-day life for Mountaineers. At its center are fundamental elements of late 19th and early 20th century Appalachian existence such as the predominance of subsistence farming, the coming of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of company towns, growing coal company influence, and the resultant expansion of political corruption. It examines how the region’s Appalachian culture and identity have adapted to and been affected by these factors as well as how stereotypical perceptions held by those outside the region have created both opportunities and barriers to modernization for southern West Virginians.

A Call to Arms: The Realities of Military Service for African Americans During the Civil War

Northerners, southerners, slaves, freedmen, free-born men, Union men, Confederates, men who wanted to fight but were not allowed, men forced to fight unwillingly, and everyone in-between. Everything that you ever wanted to know about African-American combat soldiers in the American Civil War, in one low-priced volume.

Learn the social, cultural, and educational differences between African-American northerners and southerners, which most histories treat as one ethnicity. See their differences in the light of military recruitment. The Army quickly learned that the motivations and hopes of middle-class African Americans from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia differed from those of freedmen or slaves in the South.

Northern men of color saw the benefits of American citizenship that lay potentially within their grasp. Patriotic service was key to attaining their goal, but disputes over type of service, commissions, and pay kept many out of the ranks. Southern Blacks did not have such grandiose ideals. Recruitment in the occupied South relied on their dream of basic freedom, desire for vengeance against former masters, and the chance to improve their standing and self-respect through education and government service. The main obstacle in the South was threat of lethal reprisal by civilians.

“A deeply important study of how African Americans’ daily lives affected their perception of military service and, in turn, how their treatment (or mistreatment) by the Army ricocheted back on their day-to-day lives.” — Frank W. Sweet, author of Legal History of the Color Line